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Saturday, May 19, 2012

Freeman Farms Show

I woke up at the lovely hour of 4:30 today and had the trailer hooked up and loaded (minus ponies) by 5:15. Personal best! Both Bud and Zoe loaded fine and we made it to FF by a little after 7. We were the first to pull in, but by the time we had Buddy tacked up the parking lot was full.

I schooled Bud first, and he was in go pony mode. We schooled everything in the ring, and after deciding to let him go for the big boy strides, we had a pretty good ride. I got off him and on Zoe while Nik got on Bud. We went to the indoor to school, but by that time we only had 15mins before they closed the ring to set for the first class. It was a mad house! Little kids and ponies everywhere! I did a short warm up with Zoe and popped her over a couple x-rails. She was nervous, and looky, but not necessarily bad.

In our first x-rail round the plan was to canter the whole course. We started out and she almost stopped at the first fence. She managed to get over and regrouped and tried to canter the next fence. Same thing. Poor little mare was so nervous! I decided to just trot the rest of the course, and by the end she was better. After talking to Jen, we decided for the other two classes to just trot. Why push her?

The other two round were much better! She relaxed and plodded along like no big deal. We did another x-rail class then an 18" round. She actually jumped some of those, and I had her canter around the turns then trot the approaches. She ended up winning both the second and third rounds!

Nik's walk trot classes were pretty big, but she got a 5th in one. She looked great, but she's still working on posting diagonals, and that's what got her in the second class. Unfortunately Buddy was a little too forward in the trot-a-pole, and jumped the first pole and cantered off. Nik recovered well, but she was shaken. The judge let them start over, and the round was perfect! She used all her space, went deep in the corners and had a nice trot. While not the ideal first show experience, Nik didn't seem discouraged after she got over it. It was great to see her push on thru while Buddy was being a brat.

As soon as she got off Bud, I had to get back on him. He still had energy! Seriously, if I hadn't feed him Friday night and Saturday morning, I would swear someone had given him rocket fuel. He never has this much energy at home! In our hunter rounds, I'm pretty sure we were the fastest but not the prettiest. I had to work hard on getting him to come back to me and balance in the corners. In our first course I almost made one of the cardinal sins of jumping...forgetting the last fence. We had to do a lovely swervey thing to get to it. Oops.

They had added some flowers and brush to the fences after we had warmed up, and while I was a little nervous about one of the fences (hopefully I'll have pics in a couple days, it was almost solid brush, like an xc fence) Buddy didn't care. The classes were small, but we ended up with a 4th in our hunter round, and a 3rd in both the mini medal and our eq. round.

I had signed up to a jumper round, but after our hunter classes I was exhausted. We would have had a 2hr wait for one class, and I decided it wasn't worth it. When we went in the office to scratch, we found out that Jen had won a raffle and won $60 off an entry for another show they are having in August. So we'll be back in August!